i carry your heart
by vinesse
Summary: Roxas finds out on the day he turns eleven what congestive heart failure is.


_for kpizkool_

The day Roxas turns eleven, he finds out what congestive heart failure is. He sits in the doctor's office, cold stethoscope against his chest, goose flesh slowly raising on his skin while his parents and older twin -only by two minutes and three quarters! - look on. The doctor pulls away, wraps her cold, cold stethoscope around her neck, and leads Roxas's parents away. Ventus smiles and tickles him, and Roxas doesn't hear his mother sob or his father swear. He laughs like he has all the time in the world, and in that moment, he does.

Roxas goes home and goes straight to bed. He doesn't understand why he's always tired now, but when he wakes up, Sora is home from Riku's, and there's cake and ice cream and Xion waiting for him, and Roxas is a normal child on a normal birthday. It's only after, when he finds his mom crying in the pantry, that he realizes something is wrong.

The day Roxas turns eleven, he finds out what congestive heart failure is, and suddenly he doesn't have all the time left in the world, he doesn't have time left at all.

* * *

><p>Roxas is thirteen the day he is told he won't make it to his fourteenth birthday. He hasn't been able to be a kid ever since he was eleven, and he sits like stone in the doctor's office, Ven and Sora curled protectively around him while their parents sort out the insurance and options. Sora is only two years older, but he ages before Roxas's eyes, and Ven hugs him tight while their older brother refuses to cry. Roxas turns his face towards the ceiling, and thinks about what comes after life.<p>

* * *

><p>Axel Walters dies at the age of twenty three. He wasn't good while he lived, and he stands in front of his lifeless body, watching as they cut out his heart. He wonders why he even agreed to that little notice on his drivers license, then thinks at least it's better than using him for skin graphs, or ripping out his kidneys. Axel turns, and there's a white haired man looking at him, and the first words Axel hears as a dead man are "Do you want a second chance?"<p>

Axel Walters wasn't good when he was alive, and now that he agrees to be a demon, he's not too sure about his chances at the pearly gates.

* * *

><p>Roxas is fourteen years and two days old when he lays down on a hospital bed to get his new heart. He's convinced he can feel his dying in his chest, shutting down and rendering him a ticking time bomb. His mother calls him ridiculous, but Ven holds his hand late at night and whispers that Roxas isn't crazy.<p>

The waiting room is filled with people by the time Roxas is wheeled away. Xion leans against Namine, who holds her sister Kairi's hand, who in turn sits beside Sora, who sags against Riku. Aqua and Terra form a unit around Ventus, and both hold their friend's hands, kissing and rubbing and squeezing.

They wait for Roxas, who lies in an operating room exactly one hundred and two feet away, who stops living for as long as it takes to put his new heart in. His executioner is put in a jar, a macabre reminder that he isn't and never was immortal, and his chest is sewn up with exactly eighty seven stitches.

Sora feels his heart stop the same time Ven does, and they gasp in unison and swivel towards the door leading further into the hospital. Their hearts kick in their chests before beating loud and strong, a tempo that unifies with Roxas's new battery, and Sora cries and Ven sobs and they know their baby brother will be ok for now.

* * *

><p>Roxas is fourteen years and three days old when Xion is trapped in her apartment, fingers holding onto a framed photograph of herself and Roxas while she breathes in smoke from the flames outside her door. There's nothing left for the firefighters to rescue when they arrive, ten minutes too late.<p>

Roxas wakes up to black black black and gravestones and one less friend than when he went under. Roxas feels his new heart skip a beat and shudder, but it refuses to stop, no matter how much he wants it to, and he attends Xion's funeral service with the rest. He sits in his wheelchair two weeks after his new heart and thirteen days after Xion sleeps for the last time and stares at the framed picture of a young girl with eyes that changed like the blue, blue sky, and hair the color of raven's feathers, black that looked blue in certain light, and wonders if he should have taken her place. Roxas sits there for a long time, hands bunched into fists, face a mask of stone while tears slide down his nose.

Ven wheels him back home, and Sora helps him into bed, and Roxas spends the first day home with his new heart feeling it shatter in his chest.

* * *

><p>Axel attends the funeral of a girl with black-blue hair and piercing baby blues and he sees her soul stand next to a boy in a wheel chair. He watches calmly as the girl wraps herself around the boy, and cries with him. He waits until she lets go and the boy is taken off before he approaches, wondering why he's even bothering.<p>

He learns her name is Xion, he learns she died in a fire, and he learns that the boy has his heart. He feels the ghost of it - the ghost of a ghost - in his dead chest, and he knows that beating under that blond boy's skin is his old life. Axel wonders how it's treating the kid, if it'll give up on him like his last apparently did, and he smirks humorlessly at Xion's empty coffin.

He takes Xion's hand, Xion who only had fifteen years and twenty seven days to live, and he leads her to a park in the middle of the city. He sits on the swings with her, and they talk and talk and talk and talk about nothing until Xion tilts her head back and smiles for the first time since Axel's seen her.

"You're connected now," she murmurs, "you and Roxas. Will you follow your heart?"

Axel swallows and shrugs, stuffing his hands in the pockets of the jeans he died in, and mutters what could be an affirmative under his breath. He doesn't look at her, because her gaze is filled with understanding, and he doesn't want to be understood.

Xion rocks back and forth on her swing, getting higher and higher. She stares ahead across the top of the trees as her swing peaks in height. "I forgive you, Axel."

Axel bows his head and nods once, before he gets up, standing behind the young girl and pushing her gently.

Xion laughs for the last time, pure and sweet, and she jumps off the swing from its highest point, and there's a glow before she's gone.

Axel never tells anyone about Xion, but when he squints at where the girl used to be as she disappears, he can see her sprinting up a staircase, open gates just ahead of her. Axel looks at Heaven for the first time, and turns away, because the light is much too bright and he is much too dark.

Axel leaves the park and returns to the site of Xion's funeral. He follows his heart to a small house on a cul-de-sac, and as he silently phases through the window, he takes a good look at who now owns him. He studies a sharp, young face, tufts of unruly blond hair, and he feels a lurch in his empty chest. He turns his face away, but it's too late.

* * *

><p>Roxas wakes up to a stranger in his room, sitting in the dark at his desk, and he chokes as he screams. The man straightens up and steps into the light filtering through the window, and the first thing Roxas sees is bright red hair that most definitely came out of a bottle. He sits up, grabbing at the shirt puddled on the floor, and he notices green eyes the shade comic book artists use for toxic slime. Roxas yanks on his shirt, silent now, and he studies the teardrop tattoos on the intruder's face.<p>

Roxas flinches when the man raises a hand and a fireball appears, and he feels his breath stutter. He pictures fire around him, fire eating at his skin and bones and he scrambles to get out of bed, feeling a stitch break on his chest.

The stranger immediately surges forward, fireball gone, and pushes him against his chest, pinning him on the bed. "Woah, shit, kid calm down." His voice is low and quiet, and Roxas hears the crackle of flames behind the words. Roxas shrinks away from the hand, even as his heart jumps forward.

He glances to the side, looking for something, anything dangerous he could use, and he carefully ignores the chuckle he gets in return. He looks back to the man, and narrows his eyes. "Look, I just got a goddamn heart transplant, and I don't care if I fucking die, but it will all be because of you, asshole."

The man tilts his head back and laughs, before looking down and letting Roxas up. "It's Axel, babe, and I don't think that new heart of yours will quit anytime soon." Roxas sits up again, watching the blood bleed through his shirt. When he looks up, Axel is gone.

* * *

><p>Today Roxas is sixteen years old, and he waits up in his bed for his demon. It's one in the morning, and Axel appears in a puff of black smoke. Roxas smiles, and accepts a hastily wrapped package, looking down at it with crinkled eyes. He takes his time pulling the brown paper off it, and looks down at a checkered wristband. He pulls it on, admiring it from all angles, and grins widely at his redhaired fire demon. "Thanks."<p>

"Yeah, whatever," Axel shrugs, a hand pulling through his hair. "Just saw it and thought of you. Happy Birthday, Roxas."

Roxas falls asleep with his new wristband on, and Axel reads textbooks while he sits at Roxas's desk. He hisses fire at nightmares that dare venture towards what is _his_, and in Roxas's sleeping chest, his heart beats strong.

* * *

><p>Roxas takes Axel up to the clock tower when Roxas is seventeen years and fifty six days old. He shows his demon the edge of the building, and laughs when Axel turns as green as his eyes. They sit there together, Roxas keeping a firm grip on Axel's elbow, and they watch the sun go down. When the light fades, they lean back to watch the stars appear, and Roxas carefully slides his fingers between Axel's.<p>

"I've got your heart," Roxas breaths slowly, looking at the redhead beside him.

"You've got my heart," Axel nods, leaning their heads together as he looks up. He doesn't mention that Roxas has his heart in a different sense as well.

Roxas sits there with his best friend who happens to be a demon, and for just five minutes they're normal again.

* * *

><p>Roxas is nineteen years and two hundred and thirty six days old when he visits the doctor for what he doesn't know will be one of the last times. He sits in a waiting room devoid of his parents, brothers, or friends, and no one sees the redhaired demon that holds his hand. He looks up at the doctor when she returns, and when he sees the grave expression on her face, he starts to wonder what happens when you die.<p>

Roxas is nineteen years, two hundred and thirty six days old when he finds out that his heart, Axel's heart, is dying inside him. He feels Axel's fingers tighten around his own, and as he listens to the doctor spell out his death in nice terms, he looks down at their interwoven fingers.

There's seven people on the list for heart transplants before him, and Roxas studies chewed fingernails with red cuticles as he thinks about Heaven and Hell.

* * *

><p>Axel visits a bedridden Roxas exactly two hundred and twelve days after he found out his heart was stopping, and Axel stares down at the sleeping blond. Axel presses a hand to his missing heart, and wills it to beat, just for a while longer, the kid doesn't deserve this.<p>

Roxas wakes up to Axel crying over him, and he pulls the redhead down into a hug. Axel can't shed tears anymore, but Roxas can, and he cries enough for the both of them.

* * *

><p>Three hundred days later is the day Roxas fights Axel.<p>

It begins with a "I don't think you should come visit anymore," and is followed with a "I'm just going to die on you anyway."

"I'm dead too, what does it matter," is the response, paired with, "we can just be dead together, you don't have to fucking get rid of me."

Roxas turns his head away, and stares at the wall, while Axel crosses his arms at the desk. The two don't talk, and in the end, Axel leaves, disappearing in a puff of black smoke, and the smell of fire lingers for what will be days.

It is three hundred days after Roxas receives his death sentence, and he watches his best friend leave for what will be the last time.

* * *

><p>Axel comes back fifty eight and a half days after their fight, and he can't find Roxas anywhere. He scours the house, hand pressed to his empty chest, which is silent for the first time since he met the blond, before he finds it.<p>

Sitting on the coffee table is a small clipping from a newspaper. The redhead stops and pulls it closer, bending over it and gripping the package in his hand in a white-knuckled grip.

The obituary states that Roxas Hersch, nineteen years old, passed away a week before his scheduled heart transplant. He is survived by his parents and brothers, Ventus and Sora, and he will be missed by all friends and family.

Axel breaths out, long and low, and he leaves the bouquet of flowers, red poppies, Roxas's favorite, on the table. He doesn't ever return to Roxas's house, and he never visits the gravesite where his heart finally rests.

Axel Walters was never a good man when he lived, and he figures he deserves the stabbing pain that starts in his breast the moment he realizes that his only friend had died, and Axel had never gotten to say three very important words.

* * *

><p>Axel stares up at a voice he can't see, and puts his hands in the pockets of the jeans he died in. He mulls over the question he's been given, and finally reaches up to run a hand through fire engine red spikes, lips pressed into a thin line.<p>

"Why did you leave him?"

Axel sighs, long and low, and lowers his eyes to the ground. "He made me feel like I had a heart."

Axel Walters knows he shouldn't have a chance at the pearly gates that he once sent a young teenage girl running towards, but he sees them when he lifts his eyes. He stares for a moment, a moment that stretches many lifetimes, before looking upwards for the bodiless voice. There's no response, so Axel looks towards the open gates one more time, and he thinks he sees a boy with a sharp face and tufts of unruly blond hair.

Axel Walters starts to run.

* * *

><p><em>i carry your heart with me(i carry it in<em>

_my heart)i am never without it(anywhere_

_i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done_

_by only me is your doing,my darling)_

_- e. e. cummings_

* * *

><p><strong>AN:**

hello all! i promise, this will be the last sad thing i post for a while. i've got nice, fluffy stuff lined up for valentines day and such!

thank you for reading, please review if you liked it, and if you didn't, review anyway and tell me why!

vin


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